The Big Leagues

This weekend, we made the long haul down to the valley to visit my folks.  As always, we try to cram in as many activities as possible.  I think we did a pretty good job of it! Over the next few posts, I'll recap the highlights:

Our main reason for the trip was my son's baseball tournament.  Up on our mountain, the team practices in temperatures below freezing with jackets and stocking caps on.  They deal with mud, wind and ice on the field. Sometimes there's just too much snow, and it's just too darn cold to work on the fundamentals of baseball. They all decided it was time to ditch the frozen tundra and hit the road for warmer climates.  They wanted to play some winter ball in a place where the highs were in the 70's instead of the teens.

 The team was a bit awe struck when we arrived at the ball park down in the valley.  It was really posh.  Each field was modeled after a different major league stadium, and we played on the Diamondback's field.  There was stadium seating, indoor eating establishments that overlooked the field, and even a giant bar inside....for celebrating big wins, and crying over agonizing defeats....or something like that.

We were in awe...that's for sure.

When we looked over the field, I turned to my son and said, "Dorothy, we're not in Kansas anymore."

He just gave me the look.

He's not amused by "old people" humor.

Here's my boy playing first base.

Here are some of his adoring fans.

Here's my brother hijacking my camera because he likes to pester me and get on my last nerve.

Here's my brother in his favorite pose. I've labeled it, "The Thinking Dork".

Now where was I? Oh, yes...baseball.

Can I just tell you that no matter how many times I check my son's baseball gear, something always occurs when we are 4 hours away and can't run back home.  This weekend, it was his cleats.  He packed two cleats, however, they were not a matching set.  Therefore, he wore one high topped football cleat, and one baseball cleat.  To add insult to injury, he was having a wardrobe malfunction.

You see, the new baseball pants I purchased for him in November no longer went down to his ankles.  It appears that he grew several inches over Christmas, and the pants must have shrunk several additional inches, because they now looked like britches from a "Pirates of the Caribbean" costume.  I spent $25.00 on those pants, and I wasn't about to throw them away.  I got out my trusty sewing machine, took them up to just below the knees, and added some elastic.  I tried them on my boy. They looked spectacular! They looked professional.  They looked perfect! I was in awe of my "mad sewing skillz (with a z)".

My pride was battered and bruised after a mere 5 minutes of watching him warming up with his team.  It appears that I didn't take into consideration the bending, jumping, and lunging that my son does when catching balls.  The pants started riding up, exposing his knobby white knees, and looked absolutely ridiculous!  That, and the fact that he was wearing two different shoes was cause for immediate action.

So I did what any good mother would do.  I put on my "Super Mom" cape, hopped into the truck, typed the words "sporting goods store" into my GPS, and sped like a maniac down to the nearest one to get my poor son a decent pair of pants.  I made it back to the field with 9 minutes to spare before the game started.

We made him wear the two different shoes, though.

That particular situation just screamed, "teachable moment". He had to learn a lesson about packing carefully.  I wasn't going to rescue him from the consequences of his two minute packing job. However, the pirate pants weren't his fault.  His mother is just a rookie baseball pants seamstress.  I had to save him from my gross miscalculation in hemming length.

Besides, I couldn't let him go out on the ball field looking like a total homeschool nerd.

We DO homeschool.  We DON'T look nerdy.

At least...not on purpose.